


Peccavi

by medieval_scribe



Category: The White Queen (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 06:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medieval_scribe/pseuds/medieval_scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hours before the Battle of Bosworth, Richard prays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peccavi

**Peccavi**

 

Confíteor Deo omnipoténti   
et vobis, fratres,   
quia peccávi nimis   
cogitatióne, verbo, ópere et omissióne:   
 _mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa_.

_August 22, 1485_

Dawn breaks hot and dusty over the plain. Richard shades his eyes from the light streaking into the tent from a hole in the canvas. He cannot say it wakes him, because he has not slept. Not this night, nor any night for the past several months. Sleep is for the blessed after all, and he no longer counts himself among their number.

His bedclothes are sweat-soaked and cling to him like a second skin. Frustrated, he peels them off and rolls out of the camp bed. If there's any relief for him, it is only in knowing the girl is not there now. Sending Elizabeth off to Sheriff Hutton in the dark of the night was the only wise thing he'd done in weeks, certainly the only kindness he’d done her.

He's unsure what he intended when she came to him. He hadn't been surprised, not really. Indeed, if anything, he'd expected her. She'd have wanted an explanation, and she was owed that much. But the words had been platitudes, half-truths intended to spare her the hurt of knowing he'd used her.

All sense says it should have ended there. But Elizabeth’s lovely face was still unlined by care or worry, and the draw of her youth had been impossible to resist. His resolve weakened by fear of battle and desperation, his flesh weaker still, he’d abandoned wisdom for feeling, given in. There had been too a faint hope that the act would banish his aching loneliness, the vast emptiness of his soul.

But it had gone horribly wrong. The fragrance, the kisses, the touch of skin to skin that clung to his memories were not matched by reality. He'd reached for it, the lingering possibility that he might yet find what he'd lost. But it was ephemeral, a mirage, gone before he could capture it. He'd wanted Anne, and Elizabeth was not Anne.

 _Anne_. She haunts him still, flitting through his dreamless nights, at once a fair sprite who lures him into her arms, and a dark wraith who condemns him. It is no less than he deserves, and he accepts her retribution, her scorn. But ghosts do not hear, and he cannot explain himself, cannot lay himself at her feet and apologize for his sins.

So many sins, too many to even confess! He'd abandoned his wife to her grief when she'd most needed him. He'd played false with an innocent girl's heart, soiled her with his base lust, and all for the sake of a crown. He is without love, and without honor, and what is a crown to such a man?

His head spins, blood pounding in his chest, throbbing behind his eyes. Tudor will come today, and for better or worse, it will be over. He's already decided there will be no retreat, no rallying to battle again another day, no exile across the sea. Either he will be king, or he will be dead.

Death reaches out for him, and there is comfort in knowing the endless waking nightmare of his life will soon end. But he knows it is a sin to seek death, to willfully give up a life that is a gift from the Lord himself.

He clutches at his book of hours and falls to his knees before the makeshift pri-dieu. As he has so often in the past weeks, he prays. _Peccavi!_ He confesses his sins to the Lord, to his brothers and sisters. He confides to them all his sins, of thought and word and deed. _Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa_. But he does not beg their forgiveness. He does not seek the Lord's mercy.

Instead, he asks for honor, for love, and that in death, he may find both.


End file.
